Not Really Tanya…

Hello all you Not Really Hungry followers out there! As you know, our dear Tanya is busy cooking a cute lil peanut, and so I had the brainiac notion that perhaps I could “ghost write” a bit while she’s otherwise occupied with where life has taken her at the moment. Since Tanya’s leave of absence from WW, and with the changes to the WW plan, I’ve had the urge to journal, and I figured what better way than to subject all Tanya’s followers to my crazy, over-analytical thoughts!

If you have been following Tanya for a while you may have read her post several months ago in which she interviewed me about my weight loss journey. At that time I had lost about 109 pounds. As of right before Christmas I made it to 120 (Christmas was a bit of a stumbling block, but I’m back on track!) The last 30 pounds or so have been the most difficult of the entire journey, and I expect my last 8-10 to be no different. I felt like I was playing yo-yo with the scale, up and down, fighting the same few pounds over and over. Was I not measuring as accurately as I thought I was? Was I mindlessly eating more than I realized? I was getting very frustrated, trying to hang in there, and then thanks to my other WW friend Lauren, had my eyes opened to the Simply Filling Technique and decided to give it a try. What did I have to lose, right?

7 pounds over 4 weeks, that’s what I had to lose! Wow, was I pleasantly surprised at the results! For those who are not familiar with the Simply Filling Technique, you focus on eating the power foods (now called No Count Foods on the new Smart Points plan). You don’t have a daily allowance of points, and don’t have to count points for any No Count Foods you eat. You still get the weekly allotment of points from which you count anything you eat that’s not a No Count Food. And of course you still can earn activity points (now called Fit Points). The trick with Simply Filling, though, is that you are to eat only to satisfaction. So you don’t have a daily points amount to guide you, but instead you have to allow your own hunger cues to guide you. This can be tricky, and the second week in I definitely went a bit overboard and it showed on the scale. But I have to say, it was very nice to be able to “freely” eat some of the things I had largely cut out of my regular eating plan to save on points, such as potatoes, brown rice and whole grain cereal. I don’t know if I more accurately ate to satisfaction, or if it was the change in the types of foods I was eating, but it was definitely successful for me, and I would suggest it to anyone wanting to change things up a bit and/or have another option to follow.

Interestingly, I think doing Simply Filling also prepared me a bit for the change to Smart Points. The focus on more whole, unprocessed foods while doing Simply Filling made the transition a little easier once I decided to try the new system, which discourages you from things that are higher in sugar and saturated fat.

Goal #1 for 2016: get rid of those pesky couple of pounds that I gained over Christmas…darn candy and sugar cookies lol!

Goal #2: Get to my goal weight by April 5th. Of course I set that date before I had the gain, and I also have a trip to Florida planned in February, so time will tell if this will be a realistic amount of time to lose 12 pounds. In any event it feels great to have a very specific goal and timeframe in mind, and it has motivated me to start the new year out strong.